LGA sets out "top five" suggestions for lifting burden on councils
The Local Government Association has sent ministers its “top five” suggestions for cutting the burden on local authorities in an extensive dossier outlining the bureaucracy, red tape and outdated laws councils face.
The “top five” suggestions for burdens that could be removed quickly and easily – and the “tip of the iceberg” – are:
- Removing the statutory guidance on the duty to respond to petitions on councils. “This simply serves to standardise best practice,” the LGA said, estimating that imposing the burden is likely to cost in the region of £5m
- Removing the statutory guidance on the economic assessment duty of councils
- Removing the requirement to publish work and skills plans. “This is unsuitable as a statutory imposition,” the LGA claimed
- Removing all guidance on how to implement statutory duties. “Guidance on how to implement statutory duties should be withdrawn,” the dossier said. “The judgement in relation to the LAML case has demonstrated that it has no legal force. It simply provides cover for lazy drafting of primary legislation.” The LGA said new guidance should not be issued unless a robust case can be made to ministers that it is expressly required and will add value.
- Removing the requirement to advertise planning applications in local papers. “Some dozens of statutes require the publication of notices, each contains its own clause and not all provisions are the same,” the LGA said, citing an exemption granted to the London Borough of Camden which saw it save £24,300 by using other means to advertise planning applications.
In the dossier, the LGA said: “The cost to the public purse of centrally imposed duties, statutory plans and strategies, data returns and uncoordinated inspection and regulation activities is quite simply colossal and for the most part largely unmapped and uncontrolled.”
The association added that rationalising and reducing bureaucratic and legislative burdens should not be done in a piecemeal way department by department, but instead through a cross-government initiative.
“We would encourage the Department for Communities and Local Government to look at the state of the burden across all departments and quangos so that its reduction can be undertaken in a coordinated manner that will have the most impact on local people,” the LGA said.
The dossier also highlighted:
- The 2,500 separate pieces of data councils have to provide to government and quangos
- Laws forcing councils to say how efficient they are on council tax bills, which the LGA said have cost £10m
- Laws forcing councils to put traffic calming measures on all roads with a 20mph speed limit, “even if they are quiet cul-de-sacs”
- Legal requirements to produce “a plethora of bureaucratic and costly plans on everything from community strategies to crime and disorder reduction strategies”
- The “maze” of outdated laws that councils must keep track of and enforce, such as a ban on marriages after 6pm, the offence of accidentally allowing a chimney to catch fire, and a ban on shopkeepers who allow thieves and prostitutes to assemble in their property.
Baroness Margaret Eaton, chairman of the LGA, said: “Councils have to cope with a mountain of paperwork from government and quangos and are forced to prepare bureaucratic plans on everything under the sun.
“Town hall staff have to enforce antiquated and sometimes bizarre laws, fill in endless forms and spend money dealing with a blizzard of initiatives. At the same time an army of inspectors is paid by the public purse to check up on them.”
Baroness Eaton said that, in the current climate, councils could not afford to waste money on things that do not help provide services to people.
She added: “We need nothing less than a transformation of the way the public sector works to deliver savings through a bonfire of bureaucracy, a radical scaling back of the quango state and giving power to the people who know their areas best.”
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